美国副总统拜登在四川大学的演讲

　　正是因为如此，我们发起了“十万人留学中国计划”，增加每年留学中国的美国学生人数，并保持了相当多的和平队人数。今天在这里有多少和平队志愿者？请你们举手。我们爱你们。欢迎。欢迎。（掌声）
　　Last year, over 800,000 Chinese and 2 million Americans traveled between our countries to live, work, study and explore new places. On a personal note, I’ve seen the value of these exchanges through the experiences of my niece, a young woman who learned Mandarin at Harvard and spent a year in Beijing refining her language skills and ultimately worked at our Treasury Department on U.S.-China relations. There are tens of thousands of you like her, who are going to be the key to cement this relationship and deal with misconception and form the relevant societies about the motivations and operations of each of our countries.
　　去年，80多万中国人和200万美国人去对方国家生活、工作、学习和探索新的地方。就我个人来说，我通过我年轻的外甥女的经历看到了这种交流的价值。她在哈佛大学学习普通话，后又在北京学习了一年，提高她的中文语言技能，最后到我国财政部从事美中关系方面的工作。你们中有成千上万的人会像她那样，为巩固两国关系，消除误解，建立关于我们两国的意图和运行的学社发挥重要作用。
　　These ties among our people are the life blood of our emerging partnership. The bottom line is this: As great nations and as global actors, the United States and China face many of the same challenges and share many of the same responsibilities. And the more we can work together, the more our people will benefit and -- as I said before it sounds chauvinistic, but the more the world will benefit as a consequence of our cooperation.
　　我们人民之间的纽带是我们新兴伙伴关系的生命力。归根结底，作为大国和全球要角，美国和中国面临了许多相同的挑战，也分担了许多同样的责任。我们越是互相合作，我们的人民就越能从中受益──我之前说过，这似乎有些沙文主义，但是全世界也能因我们的合作获得更多的利益。
　　President Obama and I will continue the important work of making this partnership even more positive, cooperative and comprehensive in the coming years. And I hope -- I hope that my visit can serve as a step toward these goals and toward strengthening that bond.
　　奥巴马总统和我将继续从事这项重要事业，今后使这个伙伴关系更积极、更合作和更全面。我希望我的访问能朝着这些目标并为加强相互联系迈进一步。
　　So I thank you all for the honor of being here. More importantly, I thank you for taking the time to listen.
　　我今天很荣幸来到此地，感谢你们大家。更重要的，我谢谢你们花时间聆听。
　　And with the permission of your president -- they tell me I don’t have any time, but I never like to leave a university without at least taking a few questions. So I hope it’s permissible for me to able to take a few questions from the audience. Is that permissible, Mr. President. Is that okay? All, right. Thank you.
　　在得到贵校校长许可的情况下──他们告诉我已经没有时间了，可是我从来不想在没有至少回答几个问题之前离开一所大学。所以我希望能够让我回答听众的几个问题。你允许吗，校长先生？是否可以？ 好的。谢谢你。
　　As you can see as Vice President, I’m used to always checking with presidents first. (Laughter.) I’d be happy to take a couple questions. My staff is going to get angry if I take too much time. But, please, there’s microphones in both aisles, I guess. And I -- I can’t see with the light. Gentleman all the way in the back waving both hands. It must be important.
　　你们可以看到，作为副总统，我总是习惯先向总统（校长）请示。（笑声。）我很高兴回答几个问题。如果我花太多时间，我的工作人员会生气的。现在请提问，我想两边走道应该都有麦克风。我──我这里太亮，看不清楚。
　　Q: Good morning, Mr. President [sic]. And I’m a -- student from the medical school of Sichuan University. But my question is about economy first. And as you know that the China holds about $1 trillion U.S. bonds of treasury bonds. And that much money -- actually the value is uncertain because of the downgrade of U.S. credit rating. You seem to have instilled the confidence of the U.S. financial well-being into young people today because I heard you say that the U.S. economy is really resilient. And -- but words alone cannot ease the mounting concern over the safety of China’s assets. So we would like to hear more about what measures you’re going to implement to reduce those deficits and redeem the financial strength of America.
　　THE VICE PRESIDENT: It’s a very good question. One of the multiple rating agencies reduced our rating from AAA to -- plus -- come down one notch. And that was very disturbing and bothersome to us, and we have to deal with is.
　　副总统：这个问题提得很好。多家评级机构中有一家把我们的信贷评级从AAA下调了一级。这件事造成了一些困扰，对我们来说是个麻烦，我们不得不应对。
　　We do have a deficit that I was asked by the President to head up a commission to try to deal with that deficit. And we made some significant progress, but not the progress we could have made and will make. The bottom line is we have to deal with two elements of our economy. One is what we call entitlement programs -- long-term commitments to our people in the area of particularly Medicare. That is the safety net we have for people once they reach the age of 65 to be able to be assured that they have health care.
　　我们的财政确实有赤字，奥巴马总统请我主持一个委员会来努力管理这项赤字。我们取得了一些重大进展，但还没有取得我们本应取得和即将取得的进展。最根本的是，我们必须调整我国经济中的两个要素。一个是我们所说的“福利计划”，特别是在联邦老年医保计划方面向美国人民作出的长期承诺。该计划是我们为老年人提供的医疗保障，也就是年满65岁即可享受的医疗保险。
　　And it is not sustainable without some changes in large part because we had what we call a baby boom, which doesn’t sound like much to Chinese -- 40 million people is not a big deal, I know. (Laughter.) But adding 40 million people to those who will benefit from the Medicare -- Medicaid payment -- Medicare payments has put the program in a position where changes have to be made.
　　如果不进行某些改变，该计划将无法持续，主要原因是我们曾经有过一个所谓的“婴儿潮”，这一时期出生的人有4,000万，我知道对中国人来说这不算多，没什么大不了。（笑声）但是，如果联邦老年医保计划的受益者再增加4,000万人，就会入不敷出，因此必须对该计划作出改变。
　　It’s easy to make those changes, and we had a tentative agreement to do that between the major political leaders of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party and the administration. But there is a group within the Republican Party that is a very strong voice now that did -- wanted different changes, and so that deal fell through at the very end.
　　要实现这些变革并不难，共和党和民主党的主要领导人以及奥巴马政府之间曾经达成一个初步协议。但共和党内部现在有一群嗓门很大的人，他们要求作出另外的改变，因此这项交易在最后关头夭折了。
　　What we ended up doing is setting up a system whereby we did cut by $1.2 trillion upfront, the deficit over the next 10 years. And we set up a group of senators that have to come up with another $1.2 to $1.7 trillion in savings or automatically there will be cuts that go into effect in January to get those savings. So the savings will be accomplished. But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I’m not second-guessing -- of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.